


A Little Death

by Juneybug



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade
Genre: Death, Embrace, Gen, Letter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:41:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23227264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juneybug/pseuds/Juneybug
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	A Little Death

Embrace is a silly word for it, if you think about it.

It’s like saying mommies and daddies hug to make babies when the real thing is much more intimate. I’m sure some would argue with my implication that the Embrace is closer to sex, but it can be like that. Exchange of bodily fluids, and all that jazz. Just as filthy as the thing itself.

As I bled, though, sex was the last thing on my mind. You don’t think about fucking when you die. You think… well, I thought of all the things that mattered to me. I thought about my small room in that shitty apartment I shared with two strangers. I thought about my shitty job at the coffee shop. And I thought of you, my only friend in the whole world.

If I’d chosen to kiss another boy at that party, I would have continued my life, with none the wiser for this world of darkness.

It happened like this:

I was out with some girls from work, drinking. It was a bachelorette party; it wasn’t as wild as some other parties of this kind, but it was not quiet either. It was a group of five, and I only knew two of them – one of them was the bachelorette, who had arrived at the place a couple of hours earlier than I did and was well on her way to drunkenness, and the other one was a girl I knew from work. She worked one of the day shifts, so we never really talked much.

The place was packed, just as one would expect on a Friday night. Alcohol flowed like rivers through people’s bloodstream, I was getting a little tipsy as well – I’m not exactly an ambler in these settings, and I had some catching up to do, so I was rather fast with my cocktails.

“I dare you,” slurred the bachelorette, “to kiss a stranger.”

What the shit, right? I said so right to her face as well. What were we, children? But she wouldn’t budge.

“Listen, girly. You’re always so uptight. You come to work and you sneer at us like you’re above us-”

“What?!”

“-but I figured I’d make the first move because I think you’re as lonely as the rest of us, you just fool yourself into thinking you’re happier that way. So I invited you to my night. I wanna be friends, I do, I think you’re mad cool, but you gotta meet me halfway.”

Or at least I think that was the argument. I had to do a stupid thing to prove that I’m willing to stoop that low for someone who wanted to be friends with me. And you know me well enough to know that on another night, I would refuse this and probably stop drinking, maybe stay another thirty minutes tops and then make an excuse to get home to my bed and my cat and call you on Discord to shoot the shit.

However… I was feeling quite lonely because it was actually my birthday that day and not even you knew about it. I don’t celebrate my birthdays, and I pretend it’s because I’m getting older, but the truth is that even I celebrated, nobody would celebrate with me. Because Marybeth is right.

I am lonely.

So I told her that I would do this deed, and stood up from the table to walk around, checking out the people around me. I had to be tactical about this; I didn’t want to ask some hot shit to kiss them and inflate their ego even more, and I certainly did not want to be rejected. There were a ton of people there that night, and clearly our bachelorette party was not the only one – for a second I entertained the idea of kissing a girl, which would be the type of thing that would get ‘my girls’ going, right? But then I saw what I thought was the perfect person: a lonely guy, standing at the edge of the dance floor and watching the dancers with a shy expression. His hair was a mess, his shoes were scuffed and he wore glasses.

I knew that the girls would find me boring if I went for him. But I wasn’t tipsy enough to go bolder, so I approached him with what I hoped was a seductive smile.

“Hey.”

Okay, so I may have yelled it; the music was louder here.

“I’m here for a bachelorette party, and I was dared to kiss a random stranger,” I explained. “Would you allow me?”

“You want to,” he gulped, “kiss me?”

“If you would allow it.”

Far away, I could hear Marybeth booing my choice, but I didn’t care. I wanted an easy out, and with some luck, he would be my easy out.

“O-Okay.”

So I went for it. And this was the strangest kiss I’d ever had. His lips were cold; I thought he’d just come from outside. He tasted of nothing, not even beer. And once we were done, he actually thanked me.

_He_ thanked _me_. As if I’d done a favor for him, not the other way around.

So that was it, I thought, as I returned to our table. Even though my pick wasn’t anyone exciting, Marybeth still accepted my tribute, and we carried on drinking. And I thought that was the end of it.

I ran into my stranger outside when I went for a smoke break. Damn those smoking bans, am I right?

I worried when I saw him again, because I suppose I thought he’d followed me outside, and that he would get clingy because of the kiss. Incel types are the worst. So I wasn’t very kind when I asked him what he wanted.

“I wanted to talk to you alone,” he said. He was much more confident, this time. Maybe because there was only one other person around, and that person was throwing his guts up by the back door.

“Look,” I began to tell him. “It was just a kiss-”

And that’s all I got to say, because this boy, despite being shorter than me, latched onto my hair and pulled my head aside to sink his fangs into my neck. Really, it was slightly humbling to be overpowered like that. I don’t remember half the thoughts that went through my head; holy shit was definitely one of those thoughts, and then: why does this feel so good? It felt good. Like an orgasm. It built up until it turned into a descent towards a cold sort of numb.

That’s what death felt like.

Coming back from that felt even worse.

I write this in hopes that you’ll read this. I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye with my voice; I have my reasons. But I didn’t want to just disappear from your life, so I thought… since you already do read my fanfiction, you might see this and know that I am not dead. Just… gone, out of your reach.

I want you to know that I cherished our friendship, and I will continue to do so long after you’ve forgotten me and carried on with your beautiful life.

Don’t look for me, or they will know.

Goodbye.


End file.
